Specialty Coffee News and Events from Around the World

New York

January 02, 2013

Happy New Year. I have been in the specialty coffee industry for over ten years now, and I can honestly say that every single year has been better than the year before, both for me professionally and, more importantly, for the industry as a whole.

Not everything is perfect all the time, of course. Sometimes we uncover new problems just as we think we are solving an old one. For years we bemoaned the low price of commodity coffee. Then it shot through the roof in a matter of months, and suddenly we were wondering if this industry was sustainable anymore. But crises are just opportunities. High costs, for example, just highlighted the need for increased efficiency and more resourceful practices.

The past year took me all over the world again, gracias a Diós, as they say in lands to the south: I had the chance to make coffee trips to Panama, Honduras, the Philippines, and Brazil. Not to mention the exotic, far-off land of Portlandia; my second-home New York City, and always-gorgeous San Francisco. In the coming year, I hope to make it back to Central America, to spend some quality time in Colombia, several weeks in the MOTHERLAND (Ethiopia, of course), get some real development work off the ground in the Philippines, and of course teach more courses in San Francisco.

Before my next trip, I'll be getting caught up right here on the blog with a few more articles, some picture and video posts, and whatever else coffee-centric that comes my way.In the meantime, from the chilly, dark, and crisp Pacific Northwest, here's hoping that 2013 brings you more wonderful coffee moments than ever before.

July 15, 2011

The last time I posted in May, I was in Panama. I'm in Seattle now, and here's a quick run-down on what I've been up to in the coffee world.

1) First of all that Panama trip. As I noted before, I was acting as host for a group of Puerto Rican coffee farmers who were sent to Panama to observe specialty coffee practices in Panama. There were a dozen people in our group, and we spent our time in the western highlands of Chiriqui. I knew it was going to be fun before I left, but it really ended up exceeding my expectations. I'll post some videos and comments about this project over the next few days.

2) Speaking of Puerto Rico, I'm finishing up the analysis of the soil-data project I started way back in November. There's a huge document detailing all of our findings that I've created. I will share part of that this week, and the rest of it when it's all officially available.

3) As always, I'm teaching roasting and cupping courses in California with Boot Coffee. In May and June I was down there with Willem, Jodi, and the rest of the crew for some really great courses. I will be going down there again at the end of July for another 10 days, into August.

4) In the next 12 months I'll be teaching courses in Honduras (twice), Panama, and hopefully Colombia as well. Stay tuned here for more information. Or you can check out the Boot Coffee website.

5) After a long and arduous journey through my own preconceptions, I've become a full-on believer in Kahlua. It's just so much better than every other coffee liqueur I've tasted (and you'd be surprised how many I have tasted.... think double digits). Last September I did some work for Kahlua in Stockholm. In June, this project took me to grand old New York, where the Ost Café folks were as good as good can be to me, despite new babies and new pork sandwich stands springing up left and right. Best cafe in NYC, y'all. In the next few months I'll be doing more work for Kahlua here in the USA. I'm excited to share with you what I've been doing. I'll be sure to mention it here on the blog when it becomes appropriate. Did I mention I get free rum, coffee, and Kahlua?

6) Fresh Cup Magazine published an article I wrote in the June issue, about branching out from the old familiar origins and finding new gems (Nepalese coffee, anyone?). I'll post some snippets here, copyright permitting.

7) Theoretically I have something coming out in Parade Magazine... but I have yet to see it appear and your guess is as good as mine.

7) Somewhere along the line there I was in Houston for the SCAA conference. Somewhere along the line there, Alejandro Mendez from Viva Espresso in San Salvador won the World Barista Championship. Anyone who reads this blog is already well-informed of that stuff. But still... it did happen.

March 09, 2011

I've been keeping busy teaching in Honduras and San Francisco. And right now I'm in New York doing some consulting work. Which is fitting enough because today I was invited to take part in a forum for the New York Times.

The Times published this interesting article about the possibility that climate change is the driving force behind the record-high price of green coffee right now.

The Times also runs a neat feature called "Room for Debate" to encourage discussion on their website. The editor of that feature asked me to weigh in on the notion of "peak coffee."

You can find the main page for the debate here, and my own take here. Enjoy!

May 03, 2010

"It is a higher-end coffee, and you have to take a lot of time developing and processing it," said Holt. "Once the coffee is harvested, it is dried on a raised African drying bed -- the actual coffee cherries never sit on the ground."

March 26, 2010

I am back in the United States. I have lots of great video that needs to be processed from my recent trip to Ethiopia. I will post that when I can.

In the meantime, I am in New York City for the next couple of weeks. This Sunday I will be making coffee with my good friends at OST Café in the East Village. Stop on by from 10 to 6, Sunday March 28, and say hello!

March 10, 2010

Those 40 new specialty coffee shops in NYC that you read about in the New York Times? They have to get their coffee from somewhere... this post is about the hidden side of the specialty coffee boom.

I'm writing on the road here, at the Atlanta airport. In another 20 hours or so I will be touching down once again in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

This trip is all about the Cupping Caravan in Harar. A group of 14 coffee buyers from around the world are coming together to cup coffee out at the farms and mills.

We have mobile cupping units, complete with cups, spoons, mini grinders, electric roasters, a gas stove and kettles for water. We're driving out to the mills in the remote areas of Harar via 4x4 vehicle. We have electric inverters to hook the equipment to the car batteries for roasting the samples. We're cupping all these coffees on site at the coops!

Most Ethiopian coffee farmers have never tasted their own product prepared the way the consumer prepares it. In fact, most of them are not even aware that there is such a thing as a roasting company (since roasting is done daily by the small batch on little metal pans).

We're taking all the information and process that takes months to exchange and collapsing it to a single day. I don't think I've ever been as excited for a coffee project as I am for this one. Deals will be going down, as well. The buyers are getting a chance to buy directly from the coops.

These are the changes that have to continue to happen at the production end of things if we are going to keep having such wild success on the consumption end of things that we see detailed in today's New York Times.

Please check out our facebook page and leave a comment there. As usual when on the road, my posts will come when I have the opportunity to use the internet.

October 13, 2009

There are so many factors that go into a good cup of coffee that sometimes we forget to pay attention to the main ingredient. No, not coffee. Water.

The water where you live will have a huge impact on the flavor of your coffee. The thing is, if you have lived where you do for a long while, you become inured to your own water. In New York City, the water (from the Hudson River aquifer) is actually quite mineral-heavy. This makes for water that is slightly soapy-tasting and smooth in mouthfeel. Lots of minerals can increase the extraction rate of coffee (that is, make it extract more fully more quickly).

Once I was doing a cupping in a country that shall not be named, and, having received a request for "bottled water" to do the cupping, the man who got the supplies brought in two huge containers of distilled water. Distilled water is basically pure H20, with nothing else inside. Might sound like a good thing, but it's not. If you don't believe me, you can try a little experiment at home. Make one pot of coffee with your tap water, one with some bottled spring water, and one with bottled distilled water. Just be careful to control your other variables, and you can learn a valuable lesson about how water affects taste.

I thought of this post while I was shaving this morning. I use an old-fashioned safety razor (like the baby in the picture) and badger's hair brush with real shaving soap. This method takes a little longer than a can of gel and plastic cartridge razors from the supermarket. But if you do it right, it gives you a much nicer shave. Part of the reason it gives you a better shave is that you are more in tune with the subtleties of the process. You can tell when the blade is sharp and when it needs replacing. You can feel a subtle but definite change in friction when you use a new shaving soap. It even feels different when I spent a lot of time outdoors the previous day versus staying indoors and making coffee.

Anyway, the big change I noticed recently is in the water. In the Seattle area, the
water is much cleaner than in New York City. In a way, this makes it harsher. Without those softening minerals in it, it becomes crisp and almost — I know this sounds silly — dry. You notice it when you drink it, and you notice it when you make coffee with it. And you can notice it when you shave. When I pull the razor across my face, it tends to stick and tug more. Not so much that I cut myself, but enough that I feel a touch more raw at the end of the process. In New York, the water tends to add another lubricating layer to your face. In Seattle, it bounces off you like your were a duck.

The great thing about life, and about coffee, is that you will never, ever run out of things to pay attention to. That's the fun of it. There's actually a quality to the climate here that affects coffee quality, but that's another post for another day (anyone want to take a guess what it is?). I might be crazy for thinking about extraction rates when I shave, but I suspect I'm not the only one. Have you ever had an insight into coffee that came from an unexpected source? And what's your water like?

September 17, 2009

Thank you to everyone who participated in yesterday's cupping at Think Coffee in Manhattan!

Graciano Cruz was unable to make the trip up from Panama at the last moment, which left everyone to deal with me. Somehow they endured, and we had a great cupping session with some really interesting and fantastic coffees on the table.

I've done a lot of events for/about/thanks-to El Salvador over the last few years. I've gotten to know the industry there so well that at times I think I begin to take it for granted. Or I assume that people know more about it than they do. I'm hoping to do another event featuring these great coffees in another week or two, in Seattle, and leading up to that event, I intend to write more about exactly why they are so great.

In the meantime, I can tell you we did one table of six washed bourbon coffees, and one table of six washed pacamaras and two natural coffees (one bourbon, one pacamara). The bourbons were very nice gems: sweet, medium-bodied, good acidity and clear as bells. But, as anyone who's cupped it before knows, the pacamaras were the real stars. There's such a unique, exotic edge to those coffees: a buttery mouthfeel and a peculiar herbaceous quality, on top of the chocolatey sweetness found in their bourbon cousins.

Of course, the other stand-outs were the natural coffees. People don't expect these flavor profiles from Central American coffees. I overheard a couple of people discussing how much they tasted like Ethiopians or Yemens, but cleaner. There's a lot of potential for natural-process coffees in Latin America in the coming years. Very, very few producers in Latin America understand how popular that flavor profile has become in the United States. The savvier ones are starting to get wind, and you get coffees like the ones we cupped yesterday (and reactions like the ones I witnessed). I want to feature the farms that are experimenting with this kind of processing on this blog, but first I want to get some more information from my friends in Central America.

Finally, a huge word of thanks to Think Coffee. If you ever want to see a really well-run coffee shop, stop by Think, get a table near the register and watch the baristas work their high-speed magic. Special thanks to Jason and especially Sarah, for allowing us to do the event and for their hard work and kindness.

September 14, 2009

I drink so many great cups of coffee every week, I thought it would be a fun idea to introduce a "Coffee of the Week" feature to the blog. Every week I will choose one memorable cup that I had and write it up here. This could be an espresso or cappuccino or cup of drip coffee at a coffee shop. It might be something I discovered on the cupping table. It could just be a nice cup I drank at home while watching the Seahawks administering a beatdown on the hated Rams.

I got this idea while having an espresso at Third Rail Coffee in Manhattan. So it's only right that said espresso be the inaugural World of Coffee, Coffee of the Week.

Saturday afternoon I stopped by this brand new shop on Sullivan Street near NYU. The owner, Humberto Ricardo, was one of the very earliest members of the New York Coffee Society. He and longtime New York City barista world fixture Dan Griffin have been working together a long time too, and Dan now helps out Humberto with Third Rail.

It's a small shop, but very well designed, with lots of light and beautiful small touches. They rotate in different coffees from different roasters for their brewed coffee offerings.

Humberto was in the shop when I stopped in, and he made me a dead-perfect shot of Black Cat espresso. As you know if you read this blog, I have practiced a lot with the Black Cat in the last year or so, and I've rarely made shots that were as spot-on as Humberto's. It was sweet, chocolately, nutty, slightly fruity, sweet, smooth, and oh yes, sweet. Color me very impressed.

Plus it came with the friendly faces and environment. A little perfect pick-me-up on a rainy Saturday afternoon in crowded New York City. That espresso is exactly the kind of thing that made me want to go into coffee in the first place. This week's Coffee of the Week! Thanks Humberto!